Thursday 19 July 2012

Realistic Abstraction

Louis Gonzalas told me that silhouettes are the bee's knees. and for my style I need to emphasis them to help solidify my statement within the drawing. Another thing Woo told me is distil the abstract; start bold and shapey but then mould into shapes. I've often battled with draftsman correctness vs loose, visceral scribbles discovering how challenging it is to marry abstract and structure to the right balance.

Glen Keane does a beautiful job of birthing academic drawings with feeling and life whilst the UPA genre refreshes via colour, shape, and texture, more abstract than Keane's real volumes and animated depth.
but as I learned drawing with Ghio and Taha this year is that you must study and understand the form before achieving righteous abstraction. You can see this with Picasso's early stuff, trained in realism, but an artist pioneering cubism and movements towards abstraction. Although the journey to improving draftsmanship must be driven by vitality, it's detrimental to train in something secluded, i.e.. learning to make films without making films along the road.
I don't want to forget draftsmanship but I've awakened a vitality in more abstract drawings that are sometimes purer than more physical ones (at least as an image and maybe not as real a character as Disney but as real an emotion and feeling). It physicalises what's hard to describe but as an abstract emotion not through a relatable character.


 

These are from the mid way last semester, I wanted to rock more of these fun sketches in the summer.














That's why I was dig Norman Mclaren's work so much, and also Picasso's early stages in his unique timeline, not satisfied for mere photorealism but delving deeper into the human mind and soul, and churning the thick stew of memories, emotions and feeling.